How ICA Global Sourcing Scaled Retail Operations with Sustainability in Mind

A Partnership for the Present and Future

Facing an increasingly competitive retail environment, IGS wanted a solution that could scale their operations and help reduce product unit costs. At the same time, they have a strong commitment to sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives. IGS aims for 100% supplier audits in high-risk countries to improve labour conditions and ensure responsible sourcing. They needed a system that could mirror their sourcing activities. At the same time, with European regulations becoming tougher, they require even more information through their systems.

Leveraging Scale and Sustainability to Enhance Customer Loyalty and ROI

Since their initial collaboration with TradeBeyond, there has been seamless continuity. Timely and professional support from the TradeBeyond team has been crucial for them to leverage relevant features for their business. Some of these feature developments include:

1. Their ERP system is connected to the CBX platform, allowing them to push the requisite data for GS1 standard item synchronization.

2. Their two largest partners, ICA and Kesko have their respective ERP systems (Bison and SAP) integrated with the CBX platform. This enables them to submit their POs directly to IGS through CBX.

3. Inspection reports are also uploaded to the CBX platform to enhance transparency and visibility for all parties to indicate that inspection is completed for a specific PO.

“Internal teams (eg. CR, QA, Merchandising) and suppliers now operate on a shared platform, improving coordination and reducing email traffic. Particularly with the use of inspection management, we have seen a significant reduction in offline communication time between IGS and vendors, as well as in production order verification and inspection data consolidation time. This improvement has resulted in an estimated 50% time savings compared to the previous manual processes.”

- Jeffrey Wu, IT and Automation Manager, IGS

Their continued partnership with TradeBeyond will help them navigate future challenges. This includes further identification of relevant sourcing processes that can expedite product development and delivery as well as support for more stringent compliance requirements from the EU.

About ICA Global Sourcing

ICA Sweden AB is the leading retailer in Sweden with over 1,300 stores and a market share of approximately 33%. Aside from grocery, they also sell non-food items. Over 15 years ago, ICA opened their first sourcing office in Hong Kong – ICA Global Sourcing (IGS). With their head sourcing office in Hong Kong, they also have additional sourcing offices in Shanghai, Dhaka (Bangladesh) and Bengaluru (India). Prior to opening their Hong Kong office, they used importers to purchase goods for their retail hypermarkets across Scandinavia and the Baltics. In addition to ICA, IGS is also a sourcing partner to other retailers. One notable partner is Kesko, a Finnish retailing conglomerate with a market cap of over $8B USD. For ICA, their focus on offering variety, lower product costs with fast time to market are becoming vital to their competitiveness. They needed to scale and expedite their sourcing operations – kick starting TradeBeyond’s partnership with IGS.